Spring Antiques Show Returns To Its Hartford Home

March 15, 2013|By ERIK HESSELBERG, Special to The Courant, The Hartford Courant

HARTFORD — — For Frances Phipps, a Tiffany lamp was not an antique. That was reserved for "furnishings made or imported for use in this country between 1640 and 1840," according to Phipps' exhaustive work on the subject, "The Collector's Complete Dictionary of American Antiques."

While this may disappoint fans of "Antiques Roadshow," that standard is the guiding principle of this weekend's Connecticut Spring Antiques Show, the prestigious event Phipps started in 1973 with Hartford antiques maven the late Betty Forbes.

"I'm not going to say you'll find nothing in the show that's after 1840," said Lisa Malloy, president of the Haddam Historical Society, the show's beneficiary. "There are some accessories like fine art produced after that date. But, certainly, with furniture we really do try to adhere to this standard."

The Connecticut Spring Antiques Show marks its 40th season Saturday and Sunday with a return to its original home, the fortress-like Connecticut State Armory on Broad Street in Hartford. The armory had been largely off-limits to the public since the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001, but discussions with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy last year paved the way for antiques show's return.

The two-day event features 65 dealers from the Northeast displaying museum-quality early American furniture, ceramics, silver, paintings, prints and textiles. Exhibitors set up in armory's vast drill shed, showing their wares in room-like settings. Some pieces have been known to sell for $100,000, but organizers say there are more modestly priced items. There will be booth talks by decorative arts expert Bill Hosley and Connecticut antiques dealer Arthur Liverant.

Liverant, owner of Nathan Liverant and Son, of Colchester, has been an exhibitor since the show's beginning four decades ago.

"Antiques shows have become a little more eclectic to appeal to broader tastes," he said. "The spring antiques show has remained relatively pure and true to its beginnings. I think that's a tribute to Frances Phipps."

Pure, in this case, means nothing made before the advent of mass production, that is, furniture crafted largely by hand, during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. This might include austere furnishings from the Pilgrim years, along with stately Queen Anne, Federal and Empire styles. Imported English and French furnishings are also allowed, as they would have been common in any fashionable New England residence, along with oriental luxuries like Chinese porcelain, brought to this country aboard clipper ships during the famous China trade.

Hosley, longtime curator of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art's American Decorative Arts collection, and now a private consultant, said Phipps (who died in 1986 at 62) was uncompromising when it came to American antiques.

"Frances was dogmatic and opinionated," Hosley said. "Of course, like many of her generation, she abhorred Victorian. But she had a fine business sense and she really knew her stuff."

Phipps, a founding member of the Haddam society, where she lived for many years, was from an old Massachusetts and Virginia family. Still, she relished the rough-and-tumble world of newspaper reporting, where she earned a spot beside her male colleagues as a general assignment reporter at the Hartford Times in the 1940s. Phipps also worked as an advertising copy writer for G. Fox & Co., and in the 1970s and 1980s wrote an antiques column for the Hartford Times, and the Connecticut section of The New York Times.

It was at G. Fox. that Phipps met Betty Forbes, with whom she shared a passion for fine New England furnishings. Forbes lived in East Hartford in an 18thcentury merchant's house, built by her ancestor Timothy Forbes.

Forbes and Phipps began their collaboration with the predecessor of the spring antiques ahow, the Hartford Antiques Fair, which was held at the armory every fall. This event, operated by the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society of Connecticut, was less restrictive when it came to periods, allowing Sheraton and Hepplewhite to consort with Victorian.

The Antiquarian and Landmarks show was so popular that Phipps saw an opportunity to capitalize on its success, adding a second show in the spring. In this case, the beneficiary would be her beloved Haddam Historical Society, where Phipps was raising money to restore the society's gem, the Georgian-Colonial Thankful Arnold House.

Now in full command, Phipps and Forbes decided to raise the bar, permitting only pre-1840s furnishings at the new spring show. Phipps was unyielding, and friends remember her stalking the exhibit hall in the days before the show to sniff out offenders.